Most people will experience vomiting episodes during their lifetimes. For some people, such as those who are chronically ill or who might be undergoing chemotherapy, vomiting may be a daily or almost daily occurrence. For other people, vomiting episodes will occur during periods of illness or, for some women, during pregnancy. People of all ages and health, especially children, may experience motion sickness when traveling. While the reasons and frequency of vomiting episodes may differ among people, afflicted persons typically need quick access to a receptacle to capture their waste in order to not soil their surroundings. These people also need a ready and hygienic way to dispose of their waste. If the person is not near a waste receptacle at the time of their vomiting episode, they may also need to store the waste for a period of time.
The traditional way to capture vomit is to use a “sickness bag.” These bags, which are common in places where motion sickness typically occurs (e.g., airplanes and ships), require the user to open and hold the bag during a vomiting episode. While useful to capture vomit, these bags can be difficult and slow to open, and they do not generally provide a hygienic seal. These bags also do not possess structure that allows the bag to remain in a suitable open position so that a sick person does not need to worry about maintaining an opening at the same time he or she is having a vomiting episode. Moreover, these bags do not have an opening sized and shaped to allow a person who is about to be sick to easily “aim” into the bag so as to reduce the possibility that the vomit will spill outside the bag. Still further, traditional sickness bags are not generally sized and shaped to allow easy storage and portability. Such sickness bags do not lend themselves to be carried around until needed, such as in a pocket or a purse. Because most people cannot predict when and where they may become sick, few people would desire to carry traditional sickness bags around until needed for use.
There have been attempts to provide improvements over traditional sickness bag. These include variations on the traditional sickness bag such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,344,022, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference. Other forms of sickness bags address ways to attach a bag to a frame so as to allow a sick person to vomit into a stabilized bag. These frame-type solutions are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,943,660, 6554,810 and 6,991,333 and US Patent Publication Nos. 2008/0310767 and 2005/0261644, disclosures of which are each incorporated in their entirety by this reference. Notwithstanding the many variations of sickness bags in the prior art, the inventors herein have found that none of these solutions provides a product that is readily portable, easily storable and quickly deployable as would be needed by a sick person.
In addition to there being an improved way to collect and hygienically contain vomit, it would also be desirable to provide improvements to provide portable and quickly deployable waste containers to hygienically collect and store for disposal other forms of unpleasant and, in many cases, biohazard material.
The present invention provides these, as well as other, needed benefits.